Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea
by Rehaniah
Summary: "He scared her so much, not that she would ever admit that to him. He viewed fear as weakness and she had witnessed on more than one occasion that he did not suffer weakness." - Bane/OC fic. Not a fluffy story! All recognisable characters belong to DC Comics.


**A/N: PLEASE READ BEFORE FIC! Ok, so I saw DKR at the cinema about a week ago – loved it! – and started writing this but unfortunately my memory isn't brilliant & I got one of the plot points wrong (which comes out in this fic). For some reason I had it in my mind that Talia left Bane, intending for him to die while she lived, but having seen the movie again last night – yippee! – I realised that that wasn't her plan at all; she was instead going to 'secure the bomb' until it detonated thereby killing herself as well. **

**Having said that I still finished this fic & thought I'd post because I do like the way (some parts of it at least) came out but for the sake of this fic, you'll have to imagine that Talia's plan was to let Bane take the fall while she went on to live a happy life, content in the knowledge that she'd avenged her father...**

**Hope that all makes sense…**

**Anyway, enjoy!**

Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

She is working at her terminal – well, it isn't technically hers but it is the one she prefers to use, being at the end of the line and out of the way - when she senses him behind her. His massive bulk seems to make the previously spacious sewer cavern shrink implausibly. The only indication of her awareness though is a slight hesitation over the keyboard before her fingers once again revert back to their rhythm as she continues her… _job_. Though to proclaim this work as a job was an exaggeration of preposterous standards; this was suicide, plain and simple. Unfortunately no one else here seemed to see it like she did, they called their plan a revolution, something for the greater good, but no one actually called it what it was; walking into the arms of death…

Still, there was little point in her dwelling on it… She could no more leave this life than she could stop the sun from rising…

So she continues her work, what she had been brought in to do ever since this venture was set up; hacking. She is attempting to get a lock on the various communication feeds used by the army outside Gotham City. When the takeover occurred their leader wanted to be able to see what the army was doing in order to take note of any undercover method the government might attempt to use that could hinder 'the cause'. This meant a huge amount of preparation and planning to ensure that nothing would go wrong when the time finally arrived. Simply speaking... Eva really had her work cut out. She was doing it though, but it was slow. Numerous programs needed to be taken apart and she had to remain one step ahead of the security systems at all times.

A shadow, a large shadow, fell across her work station. Her heart stutters but she forces her fingers to keep moving. Now though, her easy rhythm is lost; the sound of the keys is disjointed, agitated. She really wishes he would leave. He scared her so much, not that she would ever admit that to him. He viewed fear as weakness and she had witnessed on more than one occasion that he did not suffer weakness.

He suddenly puts his hand on the back of her neck and it is all she can do to hold in her gasp of shock. Her shoulders instinctively tense and she has to desperately fight the urge to cringe away from the contact. She has no idea what he's doing. _Why was he touching her? He'd never touched her like that before_; he'd watched her, sure… He watched her almost constantly if he was in the same vicinity… and that was bad enough. The lingering sensation of his arctic eyes boring a hole into her was what woke her up in a cold sweat night after night.

She looks down and silently curses as she notices her hands are shaking, they're still moving by some miracle, but they're shaking quite badly. She doesn't know what to do. She can't concentrate; she can feel his palm, her whole attention now focused on it, the flesh not cold like the man himself but disconcertingly warm. She was stuck. She couldn't very well turn round and say 'I'd sooner you didn't do that,' because that was just not something you'd ever say to someone like him. Though she very much doubted there was anyone else _like him_.

"I've been contemplating what we spoke of yesterday," his voice suddenly intones through the gloom, echoing oddly in the silence. Her eyes glance about though she is very careful not to move her head. She notices that they are alone. The other consoles, not that there were many, now stood empty, the seats vacant. In the back of her mind she wonders how the others had managed to leave without making any sound but that thought is soon overtaken as her mind registers just what he'd said… What we spoke of yesterday… _Oh god, she was going to die_. That's why the others had left; he was going to kill her. She felt a breathless sigh leave her body as she realises with a sinking sense of finality that she isn't going to see the sky before she dies. That was what she'd yearned for - well, what she'd yearned for that was within the realms of possibility of the life that she now lead. She'd wanted to die outdoors and instead she was going to die in some stinking sewer… Though the method of her death was no surprise; she had known as soon as she laid eyes on him all those months ago that _he_ would be the one to end her life; technically he'd already done it, now all he had to do was stop her heart from beating…

_What we spoke of yesterday_… She should have known her mouth would be the cause of her end. People always said that she could put her foot in it without even saying a word. It wasn't intentional, particularly. She just tended to speak whatever came into her head. Though she'd tried, for the sake of survival more than anything else she really had tried to keep her mouth shut, to keep her thoughts to herself. But last night he had come to her and he had sat down beside her and had made her anxious and nervous and sick, sick to her stomach with fear. And then he'd asked her questions, one after the other, as he'd done before but each time it got harder. And she had been trying so desperately to concentrate on her work but then he'd started asking her about their mission, about their goal and she needed not to slip up but she had, _she had_…

'_I don't think it's fair,' she'd replied quietly to his question, so quietly that you could barely hear the words over the tapping of the keys but he had heard them, he always heard them._

'_You don't?' he asked, his voice slicing through her conscious like a knife, sharp and unmerciful, 'Why?'_

'_I don't think it's fair that you should die while she doesn't.' Her fingers had sped up; they were running a trace through the program she was currently breaking into and she needed to get of there quickly. Damnit._

_He had watched her for several more moments as she worked furiously at the keys. There, she was out. And she'd managed to get the coordinates they needed as well. She had turned to tell him so only to realise that he was no longer sitting next to her. She'd actually breathed a sigh of relief - an instinctive reaction to his absence - but then her mind had caught up with what she'd said in answer to his question. Oh god… she'd spoken against her… against that woman, _Talia;_ the one who was, in actual fact, leading all of this. Eva herself had only seen her once; a woman with surpassing beauty to be sure but what had drawn Eva's attention were the woman's eyes; her eyes were dead and cold, and not even her beauty could hide it… _

_She'd witnessed them together and had seen Bane's adoration for the woman but as Eva had watched their interaction out of the corner of her eye, she had discerned almost straight away that Talia (Miranda Tate, who would've thought?) either could not or did not love Bane, not like the way he loved her. That was what had struck Eva about the dynamic between the two and so it had become synonymous whenever she thought of them. And then he'd come and had asked all those questions, as he was prone to do – he seemed to enjoy 'talking' to her, though it was more accurate to say that he enjoyed interrogating her – and her mind had been concentrating on other things so that when he'd asked her about their work and about the mission and about Talia's ultimate goal she had said what her mind had thought… _

_But her reasons would matter nought to him, she had done the unforgiveable; she had spoken against Talia…_

Her hands slid limply off the keyboard and onto her lap. She relaxed, as much as humanly possible, into the hold on her neck. She knew there wasn't any point resisting it after all. He could snap her neck whether she fought or not, but to fight would only prolong the agony.

She couldn't really tell but she sensed that he was pleased by her release of tension. She felt him lean his head down so that the robotic sound of his breath now resounded right next to her ear. His fingers splayed out even more over her neck and shoulders so that he was touching more of her skin. She had tied her hair up, as was her habit, so as not to have it getting in the way of her line of sight, but now she wished for once that she'd left it down – at least it would have been some kind of barrier between his skin and hers.

"I would like you to elaborate on your words," he spoke, the indisputable command clear in the words.

She felt her body shivering as icy fear gripped her heart tight. _Why was he drawing this out? Why not just kill me now?_ But despite what she thought, she still answered him. To not answer this man was unthinkable,

"I…" So hard it was, to push words out of a throat that dread had choked, "I meant what I said." The words were small and hushed and she could easily tell they weren't enough for him. Above her pounding heart she continued, "I mean, you say that you love her and she loves you… but then, if I loved someone, I wouldn't want them to die, particularly when there's no absolute reason to. To die together, I suppose that would be ok, if that's what needed to be done. But to sacrifice one half and live without the other… I don't see how anyone could do that." There was no point hiding behind falsities now, not now her fate was already sealed. So she spoke the truth, unadulterated and liberating. And, well, if she made him angry, maybe he'd kill her quicker…

"You speak of love," he said thoughtfully as she felt him run his fingers down the top of her spin, goose bumps erupting in their wake, "and yet you know so little about it."

And she had to wonder… just how long had he been watching her before he took her on that fateful day? That day when she had returned home, if you can call that dingy apartment by such an angelic expression, and had first laid eyes on _him_. She been a computer science major, and not meaning to brag, had excelled at it. However that wasn't what had brought Goliath to her crumbling door.

_Her father was a stockbroker, not that you'd think it when you looked at where they lived. However their home wasn't a reflection of his work, which was very well-paid; it was a reflection of his gambling addiction and how his fortune each month would be eaten away before the bank even had chance to take their cut. He worked for one of __John Daggett__'s many firms, one that wasn't located in Gotham city itself, but nonetheless brought in substantial income to the Daggett fortune. Unfortunately her father had managed, by a series of truly catastrophic errors in judgement to lose a sizable chunk of __said fortune__. And that was not the type of thing that would ever go unpunished. _

_She had come home from a late-night study session at college and had sensed that something was wrong almost immediately. She had run up the crumbling steps and saw even before she'd reached it that the door had been forced inwards, the wood surrounding it splintered and viscous. She'd run in, her mind screaming at her that it was dangerous but even though her father was what he was, he was the only family she had left now._

_The scene had stolen her breath. Their furniture was broken, every single piece. And there was so much blood; blood on the floor, blood on the walls, blood on the ceiling. But Eva only took in this devastation with a small part of her brain. The rest was focused solely on her father's prone form lying at the feet of… _a giant_. A gargantuan man carved out of solid muscle, his face hidden behind a monstrous contraption of spider-like tubes and black mesh. The harsh, grating sound of his breath the only noise she could hear above her own rampaging heart. He held her terrified eyes with clear, soulless ones of his own. He didn't blink. She vaguely registered two figures behind him, each holding automatic weapons but even without such things the man before her loomed infinitely more menacing than anything she'd ever seen._

'_Is he dead?' she'd been surprised that she'd even been able to speak with the unadulterated terror coursing through her veins. But it was the only question in her mind; is he dead? Is he dead? Is my father dead? _

'_Not at all,' the man had replied, and in such a strange manner that it defied belief. He sounded almost… _jovial_ in his reply, as if she'd asked a question that was in fact quite stupid. It was then she knew that she was dealing with someone, something, beyond human reason. The type of creature who thought nothing of harming others in the most hideous way possible… who could make light of such depraved indifference. The urge to run welled up inside her like a tidal wave; fear and the sense of self-preservation inherent within all humans crying out to her numb legs. But almost instantly the sensation passed, swept away by the absolute certainty that she knew she could never leave her father - all-the-more-so if he was in actual fact alive, as the giant claimed him to be. Eva glanced down to her father's figure again, mangled and bent in unnatural places. She noted the dark wetness staining the inside leg of his tailor-made trousers and her mind couldn't help but wonder what horrors he'd been put through before she arrived home. Her eyes reluctantly but inevitably returned to their previous position, _

'_What do you want?' she'd asked the towering form, barely above a whisper._

'_Your father is a liar and a coward.' The man had pronounced, his words clear despite the mask hiding his mouth. 'But I have been watching you…' And my, didn't that spark a coldness deep within her bones, chilling her soul to its very core, 'and you are not like him,' the man continued. 'You have courage and talent; a talent which I will soon have need of. So, I will put before you a choice, as we all have before each one of us. You will come with me… or I will kill your father and then I will kill you.' And she had to take a breath because her body felt like it was going to collapse. She had never felt terror like this before, an all-consuming darkness that seeped its way into every pore and sucked her life away from her. But she didn't want to let that darkness claim her; she couldn't, not if he was still alive._

'_P-please… take her.' She almost didn't recognise her father's voice, so weak and gargled the words were, blood oozing between the bruised and jagged lines of his lips. Her eyes had immediately sought him out and yes, he was breathing. She could see the rising and falling of his chest, barely discernible, but there none the less. She felt relief flood her body, giving her the strength to continue facing this nightmare that had so suddenly been thrust upon her. But then she blinked as she realised what he'd actually said. _Please take her_. Her father was willing to exchange her life for his own. He was willing to sacrifice his daughter to the monster in order to spare his own life… _

_And she'd wanted to feel hurt, she'd wanted to feel her heart breaking but in truth, the type of truth that only comes from staring into the face of death itself, all she felt was pity. She knew what type of man her father was; a liar and a coward, as had been said though not from her mouth, and he was in pain, excruciating pain, and would do anything to stop such agony as would most humans, if not all. _

'_I'll go with you,' she'd said, staring back into cold, heartless eyes, determination lacing her words. _

'_Excellent.' The man, the goliath, responded. Quicker than she could have imagined for a man his size he had stepped over her father and taken hold of her by the upper arm. Her flesh felt so fragile underneath his grip, like a twig ready to snap._

_He'd begun to lead her towards the door when she'd attempted to stop. She'd put her heels down and leant her weight backwards but he hadn't even looked back, his grip and pace clearly indicating obliviousness to her endeavour. All her efforts had done was to throw her off balance so that she ended up falling into the back of him. Her face had pressed flush against the bulk of his arm and she'd gasped at the sheer hardness of the skin beneath the leather of his jacket; his body felt like stone. Her blunder though did cause him to look down on her as she jerked away from their contact, trying to steady herself. _

'_You are changing your mind already?' came the voice from the darkness, the words mocking and sardonic. 'You wish to suffer instead?'_

'_No,' she'd said quickly, not wanting to give him any excuse to use force because she knew that's all it would take, just an excuse. 'But my father needs an ambulance.' She had been about to say, _You have to let me call one_, but thankfully her mind had stopped her from making that mistake; this was most-assuredly _not_ the type of man you made demands to. 'Please let me call one,' she'd said instead, her voice quiet and respectful but firm, or as firm as she could hope to make it in this situation anyway._

_He had observed her from his immense height - _dear lord she barely came up to his chest_ - and then had glanced behind her to her father. She couldn't help but wonder whether he understood what it was to feel for another living being. He had looked back to her,_

'_Very well,' he'd said, and nodded to one of the men standing by him who'd then taken out his cell and started dialling. She'd watched anxiously but without warning had then been dragged away and out into the open air,_

'_Wait,' she'd said, before she could stop herself. He'd turned round once more and looked at her. She searched frantically for an excuse to buy herself time to make sure that an ambulance was in fact on its way and that these men weren't just going to leave her father to die, 'Will you let me say goodbye?' she asked, this time an edge of hysteria in her voice. He had cocked his head to the side, the gesture quizzical, _

'_There is no time for sentiment, my dear. The world awaits.'_

_And with those words her life had ended and begun anew. Gone were comfort and hope, light and laughter. In their place were danger and death, burden and despair… and of course there was _him_, there was always him… _

_You speak of love… and yet you know so little about it_… It was true. She had no real first-hand experience of what it was like to feel love. Even her own father had handed her over to a psychopathic killer, and she barely recalled what her mother had been like, let alone whether she'd loved her daughter. But those experiences didn't negate the fact that Eva knew what it was to love. She knew that she had it in her heart to love another, she could feel it and it was still there, despite everything that she had been through. They had not taken it from her, and they would not. She had always been a deep-thinker, and so she had thought of what it would be like to love, and be loved. She had imagined it in the dark moments of the night when she was left alone… and had dreamed of what such a love could be like. This was the reason why she had spoken the words she had to him, to this monster who despite all indications to the contrary was, in fact, capable of love or at least a darkened, tainted form of it.

"I have come to believe that you are correct in what you say." The shock of his words, delivered like some declaration of judgement, forced all other thoughts from her mind. Before she knew what she was doing her head had swung round of its own accord and she was face to face with him. She really shouldn't have done that. She hated looking at him; he was the darkness her nightmares feared, the voice that she would hear even when he was thousands of miles away. But now she was looking straight into his eyes and she couldn't look away, such was his power over her.

"Y-you believe in what I said?" she repeated disbelievingly, her voice quiet and wary. Lord, he was _so close_. She could see every detail of him and what was worse was that he still had his hand on the back of her neck. She couldn't move, couldn't follow through on her need to recoil in terror; he was holding her in place. He answered her question,

"I do. There are many more cities in this world where wickedness abounds, and while my _habibti_ is only focused on Gotham, the others go unpunished." _What the hell was he talking about?! She never said any of this!_ Eva thought hysterically. He continued, his eyes never leaving her,

"Therefore we shall save the others, we shall save them all," he finished, triumph shadowing his words.

And to her horror, her absolute horror and utter shame, she felt tears pricking at the back of her eyes. And it wasn't because of what he was saying; it wasn't because he was talking about the deaths of hundreds, thousands, millions of people. It was because of one word, one word that he used; _we_. And she knew, she _knew_ that he wasn't talking about Talia when he said that word.

But she couldn't, she couldn't, she _mustn't_ cry in front of him. _God, please help me_. She didn't know what Bane would do if he saw her tears, but she knew him well enough to know that she didn't want to find out. She swallowed and spoke and her voice shook _but that was alright, as long as no tears fell,_

"W-we…will?" she could barely make out her words above the chant going through her panicked mind; _don't cry, don't cry, you mustn't, you can't_.

"We will." He said with finality and she could feel the darkness creeping in at the corners of her vision. And her lungs were closing, closing and he was watching her so closely but then, he was always watching her. Always, ever since he brought her with him he had watched her, and spoke to her, and got close to her and made her talk to him when she didn't even want to be on the same planet as him. He'd made her talk about everything, things that had nothing to do with him or her work; her father, her mother, the sister long-lost to her, her friends, her dreams, her memories, her loves, her hates… Everything, he had taken everything from her and kept it all to himself and wouldn't give it back to her, so that there was nothing left in her now but him and the darkness and him _and him_… And in her mind's eye she saw her life stretch out before her; a dark endless void filled with his voice and his inescapable presence-

Suddenly she stood up, for no other reason than the need for movement, for action, no matter how small, no matter how futile. She heard the chair that she'd been sat on crash to the floor behind her, the harsh sound in the otherwise silent room making her flinch. But he was already there before her, having risen at the exact moment she had, his hand still clamped on the back of her neck. And there was nowhere to go, no way that she could run, but at least she could force some air into her lungs because they weren't at eye level anymore. Instead she was staring at his bare chest, at the pale skin pulled taught over muscle and flesh and bone; the makeup of a man who wasn't a man. She took the tiniest step backward only to feel the unyielding edge of the computer terminal pressing into her lower back. He closed the gap but she didn't look up. She could feel the heat coming off him in waves. There was less than an inch of space between them. And now she knew what new horror would haunt her nightmares; being this close to him.

She saw him raise his hand and then felt his fingers on her face; his instruments of torture and killing gliding over the contours of her cheek, over her lips, down her neck… over the curve of her breast. She closed her eyes as his thumb glanced over the centre. He cupped the full weight in his hand, possessively, running his thumb again over her nipple so that she felt the undeniable pressure through the cotton of her shirt and bra.

She wanted to say something, she wanted to speak, she wanted to shout; _what are you doing?! You love Talia!_ She wanted to do anything, _anything_ to stop this but she couldn't. She was trapped inside a body that was frozen with dread. She could not even lift a hand against him as he mapped her small form. But she felt her tears, one, and then another, and another, sliding down her face to fall through the tiny gap between them.

He suddenly took hold of her face in his hand and lifted her head up so that she was looking him in the eye again. His grip was unrelenting and because he was so impossibly tall, the position put a strain on her muscles. She found though that the discomfort distracted her and she was able to stop any more tears from falling. She didn't want to think about what was going to happen next-

Abruptly the door to their room opened. Bane turned his head away from her to look over his shoulder. She heard Barsad speaking but couldn't see him, hidden as she was behind a wall of muscle. He was telling their leader that the police were investing one of the entrances to the sewers.

"Well then, I'd say it is time to teach them a lesson," Bane's voice intoned, and all of a sudden her body felt as if it could breathe again. With a stab of utter self-loathing she realised that she was feeling relief at the thought of men who were going to die, good men… but it meant that _he would leave her_… he would have to leave her…

Her tormenting guilt was swiftly replaced by renewed fear when his voice issued a further command,

"Wait for me outside." Eva heard Barsad's affirmation and then the sound of the door shutting.

Bane faced her once more. She wished now that she'd taken his moment of inattention to wipe the tear tracks off her face. She could see him looking at them but when he spoke he didn't mention them,

"So, from this moment on our new plan will commence. I want you to continue your work here. I will take care of the rest." He drew the backs of his fingers down over the side of her face. "Do not let me down." And the words sank deep, deep down inside her, sealing themselves in the dark interior of her soul; a promise and a warning that bound her to him…

And then he was gone, and there was light on her face, and men began to reappear and there were voices from the other rooms and the tapping of keys as workstations were once again filled. She glanced up but no one was looking at her. Everyone was very carefully concentrating on something else.

She bent over to pick up her fallen seat, wiping her eyes as she did so. She sat down and set her hands over the keys once more, trying not to notice the trembling. She went back to work without saying a word, her mind clamouring with thoughts; _maybe Batman will return, maybe something will go wrong, maybe there's another way, maybe Talia will find out_… but above it all his voice resounded in her mind, leaving her with only one thought, one purpose, one fear; _Do not let me down…_

**A/N: For those that are interested, I have written an epilogue of sorts to this fic entitled 'Retribution' which shows the two characters at a future point in time, but be warned: there is smut – disturbing smut! Anyway, hope you enjoyed! Have a good day everyone! **


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